Rescue the pawn to f6
li-00gS7Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1676 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Here the task is defensive: one of your pieces is under attack and must be rescued without losing more. Look for a move that saves it with tempo — a counter-check, an equal counter-attack or an interposition — rather than a passive retreat.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king g1, queen e5, rook c5, bishop c1, pawn b2 f2 c3 g3 h4.
Black: king g7, queen b3, rook b7, bishop b6, pawn d5 g6 f7 h7.
9 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 33.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (22 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g7.
It is Black to move on move 33, with 3 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. Black are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, c.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
33... f6 34. Bh6+ Kxh6 35. Qf4+ Kg7
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to f6 keeps the pressure (+3.2).
- Well found: king to h6 (+3.4).
- Strong! king to g7 is the sharp choice (+3.4).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead Bh6+, then Kxh6 and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 33… f6 — pawn to f6
- 34. Bh6+ — bishop to h6 with check
- Kxh6 — king to h6 (capture)
- 35. Qf4+ — queen to f4 with check
- Kg7 — king to g7
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Blocking save
Block the check with tempo — and turn the game around.
The blocking save: you interpose a piece against the check — not passively, but with tempo, so the blocker creates a threat of its own. Such a block turns defense into attack. Whenever you are checked, compare all three replies — capture, move the king, interpose — and among the interpositions hunt for the one that counterattacks. The mistake is automatically stepping aside with the king when an active block would have turned the game around.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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